by A. D. Koboah
During that time, I thought a lot about Mama Akosua, who had warned me to mind Luna’s anger. And yet I hadn’t. Luna and I had been together for decades, our thoughts open to one another, and because of that intimacy, we had never really spoken about the things that upset her. As a slave, she had learned to ignore pain, misery, and anger as it mattered to no one. She did not know how to talk and I did not know how to listen. The only way she had been able to express her anger was through those emotional outbursts I had quickly become scornful of until she learned to be silent. I hadn’t seen the danger in that silence.
There had been three women in my long life who loved me and I was responsible for their destruction. Julia died as a result of my pride, Henriette because of my selfishness. And I destroyed Luna because of my unwillingness to listen. Would Mallory be a fourth casualty? Luna killed Henriette, but would I really have stayed with Henriette when Luna returned to me? No, and it would have destroyed that sweet, innocent girl.
After months of berating my staff and making the few people around me miserable, I began to give Luna’s idea of a house nearby serious consideration. I even surveyed a few plots of land. I took Mallory with me to see the last plot of land, one by the sea. It was the first time I had paid her any attention in months and it was heartbreaking to see her little face light up with joy when I told her she could come with me.
I decided this was where I would build Luna’s house. I was tired of resisting my love for her. I would always be as unsuccessful in that endeavour as I would have been if I tried to stop the sun from rising every morning. But Mallory had to come first. Before I could ever let Luna back into my life, I had to wait for Mallory to grow up and move away from here. Time was, and always would, be ours. So I would wait.
I bought the plot of land and hired architects to design a home for Luna. Nothing too big, for she would eventually move back into the mansion. But it had to be special. So with thoughts of us taking long walks by the sea, I set out to build this home for Luna. And maybe somewhere along those moonlight walks, we could find a way to redeem ourselves. With that decision made, I could get back to being a proper father to Mallory.
A few years passed, each one more hopeful as I drew closer to the day when Luna and I could take our long walks and talk beneath the stars.
I saw Luna a few times during that period, but she always kept her distance. She usually stood at the gates of the mansion watching Mallory and me get into the car to take her to school.
Luna had seen my intentions and the house that was being built a few miles away. She was happy. For the first time in decades, she was happy. Happy, but cautious about upsetting me, so she kept her distance at the mansion gates.
But there was something troubling her.
It was the only thing she did not fully reveal to me. It was regarding one of her descendants, Simon. Simon had sought Luna out a few years ago after a series of dreams led him to her whereabouts. Whenever one of her descendants arrived on her doorstep, she usually turned them away—as I did whenever they came to seek me out—with the exception being Sutana. But out of loneliness, she allowed this one to linger and a close bond had been formed between them. But something began troubling her recently concerning Simon. I didn’t worry too much about it. Mallory was twelve now. In a few years she would go away to college and the day would come when Luna and I could talk about any and everything she wanted in the house that was sitting empty by the sea.
I wish I had gone to her then and made her tell me whatever was making her uneasy about Simon. But the impression I always got from her thoughts was that it was trivial and something she should have dealt with years ago.
We have all of eternity, she reminded me. We have all of eternity.
Chapter 41
It was early morning when I was jolted out of sleep by a bloodcurdling scream. I expected to find myself in bed, wooden shutters completely blotting out the sun and the room pitch black. But I was standing at the chapel, which was flooded with the crimson light of a dying day. I whirled around. Luna was kneeling at the altar, the image of her wavering and splitting in two. One face was bowed, its lips moving in silent prayer, the other was staring at me, contorted in pain and anguish. Intense anguish.
Avery. Avery.
It was gone and I was awake in the darkened bedroom.
“Luna.”
I was off the bed and to the wardrobe in less than a second, gripped with anguish. “Luna,” I said again, as if repeating the name would keep her among the land of the living.
Luna.
I dressed. I did not want to believe it was true, but the terror, the desolation was already creeping into my soul. I sank to my knees as it overwhelmed me.
I forced myself to my feet. I had to function long enough to confirm what I feared in my heart was true.
I ran downstairs and out of the mansion to my car.
I raced toward the chapel. The desolation and pain kept overwhelming me and twice on the journey I had to park the car and sit with my head in my hands in agony about the fact that the very thing I never believed would occur appeared to have happened.
I had been spared this long ago when old age should have claimed Luna’s life, and even then, I’d had decades to prepare for it. I did not know how I would be able to survive if she was taken away from me now. Somehow I managed to hold myself together for long enough to reach the place I promised myself I would never lay eyes on again in all my immortal life.
It was mid-afternoon when I stepped into the clearing. Body, mind, and soul were aflame as I stared at this place. It held so many tortured memories.
A moment later, he appeared at the chapel entrance.
He was exactly as Luna’s mind had revealed him to be. He was a tall, well built man. His hair was worn in a well-groomed afro, his complexion a burnished caramel. He appeared vain, even from this distance, and arrogant.
“I didn’t expect you to be here for quite a few days,” he said. “Luna will be pleased to see you. So just make me into a vampire and I’ll tell you where she is.”
I leapt into the ether and materialised a few yards from him.
“Do you think I wouldn’t know she’s dead? That you killed her?”
The arrogance wavered and he moved back into the cool darkness of the chapel. I could feel the presence of the entity reaching for me, much stronger than it had been when I rescued Mama Akosua from it.
“It was an accident,” Simon spat. “If she’d just done—”
I moved slowly into the chapel, something he hadn’t expected me to do. He held out his hands and backed away farther into the chapel.
“Wait now, hold on! I didn’t kill her. It was that damn thing. It tricked me!”
As he spoke an image from his mind rose up like a cobra. It lunged at me and I couldn’t speak, just stand there and stare at him.
Luna died at the back of the chapel. He wound a silver chain around her neck and suspended it from a hook nailed to the ceiling. He then hoisted her into the air, directly in the sun shining through the gap in the roof. Her hands and feet were tied together. It was as if I were standing just a few yards from her, yet she was completely and forever out of my reach and I couldn’t save her as blood flowed from an incision along her wrist. He stood before her, his lips and shirt covered with blood as he shouted at her.
“Tell me!” he roared. “Tell me how I can become a vampire!”
When he received no answer, her eyes rolling back into her head by now, he yanked on the chain, increasing the pressure to her neck.
That is when things moved out of his control with devastating speed. The chain became taut as if it had a life of its own. Then it tugged itself out of his hand and broke free from the hook attached to the wall. Like the tail of a scorpion, it lashed out and whipped itself across his face.
He leapt back, bringing his hand to his face as fear overrode the pain from the blow. At first he thought it was Luna controlling the chain, until it whipped through the air out of
his reach and hoisted Luna higher into the air, winding tighter around her neck.
“No,” he murmured as he ran toward her.
She was only half-conscious but was still able to struggle as the chain cut into her neck. Below, Simon was in a panic and screaming her name as he jumped into the air trying to catch hold of her feet and pull her back down. But in the end, all he could do was move back in horror as the chain bit deeper into her neck, cutting through the flesh like a knife. Up until then she had shown no overt distress, her eyes closed, her face calm, almost serene, as if she had completely surrendered to the inevitable. But then intense anguish seized her and her beautiful face flamed with terror as her lips moved wordlessly.
Simon looked away as she was decapitated.
The tension went out of the air as she fell into a heap on the floor, her head rolling across the ground, stopping a few inches from his feet.
He ran out of the chapel and threw up outside in the stream, the water turning crimson as it was mainly her blood in his stomach. This increased the nausea and it was a while before he could stop.
The chapel was quiet when he re-entered it, as if the entity had gone to sleep. He took Luna’s remains outside and buried it. Then he pulled a jumper on over his bloodstained T-shirt. He didn’t want to stay at the chapel, but he knew I would find him before the sun set and that this was the only place he would ever be safe. The entity would not let him die. That had been their pact. He was supposed to force Luna to turn him into a vampire so the entity could live again through him. It would not let him die.
He was still talking, backing farther into the chapel, every word he uttered inflaming my anger and cheapening the loss I had suffered.
“You can’t kill me,” Simon was saying. “I’m the only one that can control it now.”
I closed the space between us in less than a second and placed one hand in the thick dark afro he was so proud of, the other on his neck. I tore his head off his neck and blood spewed from his headless corpse. I released him and stood staring down at his body twitching beneath me, the violence doing nothing to assuage the turmoil and grief.
It was a few moments before I noticed something strange was happening. It took a few seconds for his heart to stop beating and blood gushed violently from his neck, but instead of pooling on the floor, it was sinking into the ashen floorboards of the ancient chapel as if it were being consumed, lapped up by some grotesque unseen tongue. The presence around me seemed to surge with power and those fingers were upon me again, pulling at me and trying to draw me deeper into the chapel and its cold, dark stomach.
I backed away from Simon’s remains and out of the chapel. I could still see the image of Luna tied helplessly, struggling in vain as the chain bit into her neck, sinking deep into her flesh until...
I covered my eyes with my hands. But of course, I could not block out the image.
I turned and ran into the trees.
I do not recall the drive home. I only remember removing my shirt and wiping off as much of Simon’s blood as I could before I put on a spare set of clothing I kept in the car.
When I entered the mansion, Mallory ran out into the hallway. She glared at me.
Where were you? her mind screamed at me.
I could not speak. I could not even utter a meagre apology for forgetting to pick her up from school or even ask how she had gotten home. I swept past her and to my room, where I was finally able to give in to my grief.
She was dead. Luna was dead.
Chapter 42
There is simply no way for me to accurately describe what I experienced following Luna’s death.
For the first few months I would stand outside the mansion in the predawn darkness and wait for the sun to push its way up toward the sky expecting, and hoping against all hope, she would somehow be able to keep the promise she made and find a way back to me. But mid-morning would find me still waiting in the field of flowers for her.
I completely disappeared into myself during the months and years that followed. I went through the motions and only returned to the world around me for brief moments.
One evening I left the mansion to walk the dogs and was brought back to my surroundings by the feel of a small, cold hand in mine, by how tightly she was holding on to it. I glanced down at Mallory. She was looking up anxiously into my face, shivering, her teeth chattering. Her eyes were large in her pale face, her hair wet and plastered to her head. Her nose was red. I realised I had been standing in the same spot for the past fifteen minutes staring at absolutely nothing. It was also raining. Heavily.
“You’re completely soaked,” I mumbled.
I called the dogs and scooped her up into my arms, only dimly registering how tall she now was. I ran through the rain back to the mansion.
On another occasion I was in the study sitting in the chair by the fireplace staring morosely ahead of me. Mallory was in my arms, fast asleep. It was three o’clock in the morning.
I stood up with her in my arms and shimmered out of the study to her room. I placed her in bed. Then a flare of illumination hit me. It had been two months since Luna’s death and Mallory, who had spent nearly every moment by my side since that day, had not been to school in that time.
I left the room and returned to my seat by the fireplace.
Mallory was stunned and bewildered when I woke her up to get ready for school a few hours later. At first she refused and her demeanour soon turned frosty when she saw I wasn’t going to let her stay at home. She sulked on the drive to school. Outside the gates, I leant to kiss her on the cheek. She snatched her hand out of mine and stalked away. I saw only the rucksack on her back, thin pale stalks for legs and a flash of her red hair as she disappeared into the school building. But I caught a glimpse of her at one of the windows watching anxiously as I drove away.
When I returned to collect her from school, I was surprised when she ran up and flung her arms around me. She held on tightly to my hand. It was a small return to our usual routine, but I remained vacant, lost in the devastation of Luna’s death.
My trips to reality grew longer as the years wore on but I still remained largely oblivious to all that was going on around me.
I was forced back into the world of the living three years after Luna’s death. The day began normally enough. I returned to the mansion after a night spent wandering the streets. As had become habit, I avoided the field of flowers. It was just too heart-wrenching to see it, expecting to find her waiting for me.
Bernice, Mallory’s current minder, walked into the hallway only moments after I materialised there. She was holding a vase of white flowers. She half jumped out of her skin when she saw me standing there.
“Mr Wentworth, I didn’t hear you come in,” she said with a slight frown.
I had hired her shortly after Luna’s death. She had no experience with childcare, or housekeeping, but was now responsible for Mallory’s care and the running of the mansion. I had chanced upon her on one of the brief moments when I returned to my surroundings.
Mallory and I were in the supermarket when I came to and saw her signing with a heavyset African American woman in her early forties. She was childless, and it was clear she adored Mallory and that the feeling was mutual. She scowled when I approached them. She saw us weekly and had observed the way in which I barely took notice of the child and she didn’t like it one bit. That is what made me hire her despite her lack of experience. She was now solely responsible for Mallory’s well-being as I rarely spent time with her these days.
Bernice’s frown disappeared and she assumed her usual, and extremely annoying, cheerful demeanour.
“Did you have a good night, Mr Wentworth?” I had told her a million times she could call me by my first name, but it always fell on deaf ears.
“Yes. Is Mallory awake?”
“Not yet, sir. That child is up until all hours. Every night. She hardly gets any sleep at all these days.”
“Hm. I have left some packages in the study
that need to go to England. Can you make sure they get sent out today?”
“Of course, sir. I was talking to Louise yesterday...”
I stared blankly at her.
“Louise, the cook.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Mallory was telling Louise she would just love to go to England, and we were thinking it would be nice if you could take her to London for a few days so she can see where you grew up.”
“You can go ahead and book the holiday for you and Mallory.”
“Yes, Mr Wentworth.”
I tended not to read the minds of my employees as I generally did not want to be bothered with their thoughts of me or their job. I did not want to be bothered with much of anything these days. But as I turned to leave, Bernice’s thoughts came to me clearly, probably since those thoughts had been directed at me and because of the force of the emotion behind them.
Oh, I could take this damn ugly vase and throw it at his head. That child is running wild, out God knows where every night, and this fool hasn’t even noticed.
I was so surprised I stopped and faced her with a frown, my gaze involuntarily drawn to the vase, which she held in an extremely tight grip. When I turned my gaze to her, her eyes widened in shock.
Oh God, oh God! Did I just say that out loud?
I carefully took the vase out of her hand and placed it on the small table in the hallway. I smiled to try and put her at ease. “These lilies really brighten up the hallway, don’t they?”
She let out a breath, visibly relieved.
“Why don’t you order more and place them in every room?”
Oh great. Like this house isn’t enough like a funeral parlour as it is. “Yes, sir. That’s a really good idea. I’ll get that done straight away, Mr Wentworth.”
